


Friends

by AdelaideElaine



Category: Veep
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drug Use, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Language, Mentions of Eating Disorder, Sexual Content, alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 22:16:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4279941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaideElaine/pseuds/AdelaideElaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friends should sleep in other beds,<br/>And friends shouldn’t kiss me like you do.</p><p>****</p><p>Dan and Amy, the college years. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This story isn’t necessarily strictly non-canonical, since we don’t know a lot about Amy and Dan’s pre-show dalliances, but since it takes place during their college years and we have no reasons to think they ever went to school together, I’m calling it AU. Hope that doesn’t cause any confusion.
> 
> I am obsessed with this pairing. I can’t totally explain why? I heard the song “Friends” by Ed Sheeran for the first time this weekend and the images that would become the idea for this piece sprang into my head. I do hope you enjoy. My ongoing Dan/Amy work, “I’ll Stand By You,” has not been abandoned, and you can expect updates for that in the near future.

_ Friends just sleep in another bed, _

_ And friends don't treat me like you do. _

_ I know that there's a limit to everything, _

_ But my friends won't love me like you. _

 

***

 

** 1998 **

 

There’s a Post-It note, curling in the late-summer humidity, stuck to Dan’s bedroom door when he arrives at the frat house that afternoon. “GOLF ON THE QUAD,” it reads, in scrawled blue ink lettering. Sweaty and tired from a busy morning of kissing ass at an alumni breakfast and sizing up the new girls moving into the freshman dormitory across the lawn, Dan can’t muster much enthusiasm for his new roommate’s favorite pastime. Dan pulls the note off the door. 

 

“DON’T BE A PUSSY” has been penciled in hastily on the back. Dan rolls his eyes and shoves the crumpled Post-It into his battered brown briefcase. All the guys make fun of him for a using a briefcase instead of a backpack, but when they drag their dirty Jansport rucksacks into alumni meetings, Dan has the last laugh. 

 

He unlocks the bedroom door and throws his briefcase on the unmade bed before crossing to the window on the far side of the room. In the distance, he can see a few polo-shirted figures swinging golf clubs on the North end of the quad. A few unlucky students— freshmen too, but the looks of the lanyard swinging around their necks— duck to avoid stray balls that fly through the air. A smattering of girls in swimsuits have set up towels not too far from where the guys are teeing off. Dan eyes a lithe, tan girl with long curly brown hair, and then the briefcase on the bed, which holds his as-yet-incomplete Student Government application. 

 

Well, it couldn’t hurt to blow off a little steam with the guys, right? After all, the whole point of joining a fraternity at college had been to make enduring friendships that would hopefully lead to future business connections. And it would be a shame to miss out on Orientation Week, which was effectively Open Season on the new crop of freshman girls.

 

Dan changed out of his khakis and button down into a pair of gym shorts and a worn-in Cincinnati Bengals t-shirt handed down from his older brother, and joined his friends out on the lawn, his golf bag slung over his shoulder.

 

“Nice clubs, dude,” Dan’s roommate Jay observed, admiringly.

 

Dan lined the head of the club up with the small white ball. “Thanks, bro. Gift from the old man. He said I’d need them for business lunches.” The assembled fraternity members, most of them juniors seeking internships at law firms, nod knowingly. 

 

The girls on the edge of the quad are watching, but Dan pretends he doesn’t notice. At the last moment, his eyes flick away from the ball and land on the curly-haired brunette. He watches her lovely mouth drop open in horror as he swings, wildly misaiming, and the golf ball goes flying not further down the quad, but towards the sidewalk outside the campus bookstore. The sunbathers gasp and shriek as the ball goes soaring and finally hits a small girl with short blonde hair right on the flank, just above her right knee. Her knee buckles and she tumbles to the ground, a stack of textbooks spilling onto the sidewalk in front of her.

 

The girls’ cries and the loud laughs and jeers of the fraternity brothers draw the eye of a tall, bald man Dan recognizes as the Dean of Student Affairs. As the Dean’s mouth curls into a deep frown of disapproval, Dan sees his promising Student Government career flashing before his eyes, and he goes rushing for the fallen girl.

 

“Sorry!” Dan shouts across the lawn. “Sorry!” He sinks to a crouch beside the girl, who is struggling to gather up half a dozen heavy textbooks in her thin, wiry arms. “Sorry about that. A little lawn game, you know, just trying to enjoy campus before it gets cold.”

 

The girl says nothing, but looks at him sharply with her large, blue eyes. Dan forgets to remember if the curly-haired brunette is still watching. 

 

“Are you ok?” He asks. It’s as close as Dan gets to sincerity.

 

“I’m fine,” the girl grumbles, adding sarcastically, “Ask your ‘brothers’ for a Mulligan.”

 

He picks a book up off the pavement in front of them. “ _Introduction to Mid-Century American Reforms_. Poli-Sci major?”

 

“Good work, detective,” she replies, taking the book back with some difficulty.

 

“I’m a Poli-Scit major too,” he explains, puffing out his chest ever so slightly. One of the great jobs of being a sophomore is finally having younger students to impress one’s wisdom upon. “I took that course last year. Which professor’s teaching it this year?”

 

“Wilkins.”

 

“Well, then, as long as you do the readings, you’ll be fine.”

 

“Wow, great advice.” The girl straightens up, leaving Dan kneeling on the grass, and feeling a bit put out. She didn’t seem very impressed at all. “I always do the readings, anyway.”

 

From his lower vantage point, Dan has a good view of the pale, smooth skin of the girl’s right leg, and the almost perfectly-round purple bruise that’s forming on it. The girl sees him looking at her thigh and scowls, tugging the hem of her modest, tailored shorts a bit lower. He flushes slightly, under his freckles, and stands, shoving his hands into his gym short pockets. “Well, maybe I’ll see you around. Since we’re both studying Poli-Sci.”

 

“Maybe,” the girl responds in a toneless way that drives Dan crazy.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

Her wide blue eyes narrow suspiciously, as if the question were somehow too personal. “Amy,” she responds, finally.

 

“I’m Dan,” he offers in return. Amy shrugs, and as the books in her arms shift, a piece of paper comes fluttering out from under the cover of the American Reform book. Dan stoops to pick it up off the lawn. It’s a Student Government application, like the one in his briefcase— but Amy’s is fully filled out, in immaculately neat hand-lettering. He examines it. “You’re running for Treasurer? As a freshman?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Dan chuckles, a bit smugly, and gives her back the form. “Just so you know, they never elect underclassmen to that seat.”

 

In truth, it was the exact position he himself had been planning on running for, but she didn’t need to know that.

 

Amy still looks infuriatingly nonplussed by his worldly wisdom. “Well, I’ve always been called old for my age.” With that, she strides purposefully back towards the freshman dorm, her arms full of books and her over-large backpack thumping painfully against her small frame. Dan watches her go. Behind him, Jay whoops and throws Dan's new club up into the branches of a tree, but Dan takes no notice.

 

***

 

** 1999 **

 

Dan flops onto Amy’s unmade twin bed with a groan of exhaustion. “I can’t. Believe. How many books. You have.”

 

“I’m taking a heavy course load this year,” Amy explains for the umpteenth time, the mattress sinking slightly as she perches on the edge of the bed beside him. “Sophomore year is very important for internships.”

 

“I’d understand if they were all textbooks. But you have so many goddamn novels. You might be the only person I’ve met at this school who actually reads for pleasure.”

 

Amy wrinkles her nose. “Well, that’s not terribly surprising, considering that you spend all your time with your frat brothers.”

 

Dan raises his eyebrows at her, his cheek sticking to the plastic mattress cover. “They complain that I spend all my time with you.”

 

Amy makes a scoffing nose, breathing out shortly through her nose. Dan traces a pattern in the birthmarks on her bare leg until she swats his hand away. He rolls over onto his back and stares up at the cheaply tiled ceiling. “I can’t believe you actually snagged a single room. Sophomores never get singles.”

 

Amy smirks. “Just like freshman are never elected treasurer?”

 

“You’ve had a whole year to rub my face in that, now let it go,” Dan grumbles, pinching the soft flesh at her waist and making her squeak.

 

In truth, Amy’s parents had managed to secure a single dorm for her by playing up her “medical issues”— specifically, the eating disorder that had dominated her last two years of high school. But Amy elects not to share this information with Dan. At best, he would tease her for being “spoiled”— which is pretty rich, coming from the undergrad driving a shiny new Lexus— and at worst they’d have another awful fight, like the one they had last year when Dan was searching for a highlighter in her desk drawers and stumbled upon a ziplock baggie full of assorted laxatives and diet pills.

 

Dan sighs and closes his eyes. Amy studies his face, which is open and almost friendly in repose. It had been a long summer away from campus, and she’d almost forgotten how annoyingly handsome Dan was, with his easy grin, strong hands, and smattering of freckles. What had begun as a Student Government “alliance”— how Amy had laughed at him the first time he brought up that word!— had become something resembling a genuine friendship. They’d known each other for almost exactly a year now, and Amy still wasn’t sure what to make of Dan Egan. The few friends she’d managed to make at college hated him. Her parents, who’d only met him twice, adored him. He helped her with her Student Government initiatives. He was motivated by his own ambition. He walked her home from the library late at night. He stole her bra for a fraternity prank— but returned it with such a guilty, reverent expression that it was hard to stay angry at him.

 

“Want a drink?” Amy asks, suddenly hopping off the bed and crossing to her mini fridge.

 

Dan opens one eye. “Whaddya got? Coke?”

 

“Beer,” Amy says proudly, showing off a gleaming six pack of brown glass bottles.

 

Dan sits up. “Where did you get the beer, little girl?” Amy rolls her eyes. He's been just unbearable since he turned twenty-one.

 

“We’re on a college campus. It’s not like it’s hard.”

 

Dan eyes her and the beer, feeling torn. On the one hand, having a nice cold beer after a long day dragging Amy’s heavy boxes through an un-airconditioned dormitory sounded pretty good. On the other hand, he’d been under the impression that he was the cool, older friend Amy turned to when she was looking for booze or weed, and he feels a little hurt that Amy, ever paranoid about getting in trouble with their school, had entrusted someone else with the responsibility of corrupting her. “Who bought it for you?” Dan asks, keeping his tone as casual as possible.

 

“Some guy in my Economics class.” Amy frowns as she tries to remember his name. “Ned. Or maybe Ed? Tall kid. I think he’s a finance major.”

 

Dan nods uneasily and drowns his discomfort with four of the six beers. Amy polishes off the other two and within a couple of hours, they’re both good and sloshed. Evening falls on their first day back on campus, but even as the sun dips down below the horizon, the dormitory— built in the early 1800s, Amy’d once read— remains stiflingly hot. 

 

“Come on,” Amy pleads with the ancient air conditioning unit jammed into her dusty window, “Come onnnnnn. _Worrrrrrrk_.” She slurs, kicking it lazily, her foot slick with sweat.

 

“It’s no use,” Dan says, peeling off his damp shirt and tossing it across the room. He watches as Amy glances at his bare torso, then away again. He finds himself annoyed by her lack of response. They’ve crashed in the same twin bed plenty of times, usually after a night of intense studying and quizzing each other. He used to pray Amy wouldn’t comment on his morning wood the next day, but now he almost wishes she’d bring it up (no pun intended) after all, so he could have the bare minimum of assurance that she saw him as a man. 

 

Amy gives the AC unit one last poke with her big toe and then moans in defeat, swaying ever so slightly on the spot. She gathers her shoulder-length blonde hair into a ponytail, lifting it off her neck in a somewhat futile effort to beat the heat. Impulsively, Dan presses his mostly-empty beer bottle, still damp with condensation, against the back of Amy’s bare neck. She squawks in surprise and jumps, swatting it out of his hand as she spins to face him. The bottle goes flying from Dan’s loose, sweaty grip and smashes agains the cinderblock wall, the little bit of beer that had remained inside of it dribbling out onto the floor. 

 

Amy stomps her foot and tosses her head in frustration. “Clean that up,” she snaps at Dan, peevishly.

 

“Don’t be a bitch just because it’s hot and you’re cranky.”

 

“Don’t call me a bitch,” she retorts, her eyes flashing dangerously. 

 

Dan pushes on doggedly. “I didn’t call you a bitch. You were just acting like a bitch.”

 

Amy throws herself onto the bare bed with a groan, spreading out her limbs like she plans on making a snow angel. “Just clean it up.”

 

Dan slides onto the bed next to her, pushing her over towards the wall. “You’re the one who tossed it.”

 

“No, I didn’t.” Amy pouts, shoving her lower lip out, and Dan is struck by the sudden impulse to pull that lip between his teeth. She presses her palms flat against his bare torso. “Get out of my bed, you’re too hot.”

 

“ _Thanks_ ,” Dan purrs, slithering closer to her in the bed. She can feel his breath on her face. Her hands are still on his chest, but she’s not pushing anymore. “I’ve been waiting for you to admit that you’re in love with me.”

 

“Ha. Ha,” Amy says, without a trace of genuine laughter in her voice. “Dream on.”

 

Dan’s hands creep under the hem of her tank top and he tickles at the soft skin of her belly. Amy squirms away, her back pressed against the cool cinderblock wall. She feels Dan’s heartbeat quicken underneath her palm.

 

“Admit it,” he says, and it’s almost a relief when he leans over and opens his mouth against hers, because it saves her from having to give a truthful answer. 

 

He tastes like beer and mint gum and the salty tang of sweat, like every boy she’s ever kissed, and for a moment she almost forgets that this is Dan she’s making out with. It’s only when he’s pulling off her shirt and pressing his stubbly face against her bare breasts that she realizes, _Oh my God, I’m going to have sex with my best friend_. It’s the first time she’s ever used those words to describe him, even in her own head.

 

Dan squeezes her right breast, hard, and grinds his hard cock into the mattress when Amy whimpers in response. His thoughts are nothing so articulate.

 

It’s only the next morning, when Dan sees the small blood stain on the mattress, that he realizes that Amy was a virgin. She doesn’t meet his eyes; just uses one hand to trace the blood stain as the other holds a sheet over her naked body. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get the security deposit on the room back now,” she murmurs in a small voice.

 

“Don’t worry about that,” Dan reassures her, gingerly tucking a stray blonde lock behind her ear. “I can pay for that.”

 

Amy stares at the fragmented beer bottle pieces on the floor and says nothing.

 

****

 

** 2000 **

 

Amy shouts something at Dan over the din of the party, but he can’t hear her. “What did you say?”

 

“I said,” she hollers, “Big man on campus. You’re the big man on campus!”

 

Dan smirks and takes a swallow of his beer. “Guess so!”

 

“A senior!” Amy shouts, rolling her eyes and wincing as one of his fraternity brothers sets off an airhorn a few feet away. He watches her pink lips form the words “ _What an asshole_.”

 

“Let’s go outside,” Dan yells, taking her wrist and leading Amy out onto the front porch, which is unoccupied, save Dan’s former roommate Jay, who is vomiting into the nearby hedges. Dan is nursing a red Solo cup of potent Jungle Juice, and Amy smokes a joint somehow daintily, like Audrey Hepburn puffing from a long cigarette holder. Wordlessly, he offers her a sip of his drink, and she accepts it.

 

“ _Oooh la la_ , look at me,” Amy jokes, her lips curling into a sardonic grin, “I’ve got Mr. President all to myself.”

 

It turns Dan on when Amy calls him that, but he laughs the nickname off. “President of a fraternity is nothing compared to student body Vice President, and we both know it.”

 

“Depends on what circle you travel in,” Amy says with a shrug. “Come on, we both know Veeps have no power.”

 

“But next year you’ll be the president.”

 

Amy taps her joint against the railing of the porch to ash it into the grass. “With a bit of luck.”

 

Dan knocks his elbow against hers. “Nah, luck’s got nothing to do with it.”

 

Jay stumbles away, into the night, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Amy watches him go, then fixes her gaze on Dan, studying him openly. “Did you miss me?” she asks, plainly.

 

“Yes,” Dan admits, hoping the dark of night will hide the flush of heat he feels rising to his face. They’d e-mailed back and forth all summer, but it wasn’t the same as hanging out in Amy’s dorm, sharing notes, watching bad TV, and occasionally fucking each others’ brains out. Amy had sent him a postcard from her family’s lake house in upstate New York, sealed inside an envelope with a polaroid of herself wearing a blue bikini and holding aloft a large trout. He’d thought of that picture often, back in Ohio, while the lifeguard at his parents’ country club sucked him off in one of the poolhouse changing rooms.

 

“Did you get laid a lot this summer?” Amy asks, in that eerie I-really-might-be-able-to-read-your-mind way that she has.

 

Dan gulps. “Yeah, guess so.” Amy nods, seemingly unfazed. “What about you?”

 

“Did I fuck a lot of guys, or did I fuck a lot of times?”

 

“Either. Both.”

 

“Just the one guy,” Amy says, blowing a smoke ring into the darkness. “A lot of times.”

 

It’s the worst possible answer she could have given him, and Dan feels his chest tighten painfully. “Oh.” He manages a chuckle. “Lucky him, I guess.” He knocks back the rest of his liquor in one go.

 

Amy takes one last puff on the remaining roach and tosses it on the porch, twisting it out under her sandal. “Walk me home? For old times’ sake.”

 

Dan scratches the back of his neck. “It’s still so early, Ames,” he sighs.

 

Amy lifts her eyebrows, slightly. He usually only calls her ‘Ames' in bed. She can see the faint outline of his broad shoulders and chest through his t-shirt, which is thin and white and emblazoned with his Greek letters. She feels slightly dizzy then, tingly beneath the skin, and whether it’s the weed or lust or some combination of the two is anyone’s guess. “I have to get up early tomorrow to help set up the Student Government booth at the orientation fair.”

 

They walk back to her apartment building in near-silence, but when Amy invites Dan up to her room, he doesn’t bother feigning reluctance, but instead follows her up the narrow flight of stairs, the frat party already all but forgotten.

 

Her suitemate hasn’t moved in yet, and the place is barren. Dan’s barely closed the door behind them before Amy is unzipping her dress and stepping out of it. Her eating habits and general health have improved greatly over the past two years, resulting in a slight weight gain that brought about some womanly curves. Amy looks very different now from the bony creature he’d brought down with a stray golf ball, and for the first time, Dan feels shy in her presence. 

 

Then Amy growls “Come over here, Mr. President,” and crooks her finger beckoningly. Dan’s cock rises to attention, reminding him that shyness is ultimately counterproductive, and he takes her right there, on the cheaply carpeted living room floor.

 

Afterwards, they lie side-by-side in her narrow bed. Amy’s stoned and already drifting off to sleep. “What am I going to do without you next year?” she asks rhetorically, wrapping both her small hands around one of his larger ones and tucking it beneath her chin. She presses her soft cheek against his calloused knuckles as her eyes drift shut.

 

Dan thinks that the answer is probably _Find another fuck buddy,_ but he can’t bring himself to spoil such a nice night. He waits until he’s sure Amy’s asleep before burying his face in her hair and inhaling her smell deeply. Tomorrow, they’ll have breakfast at the dining hall with all their friends, and they’ll act like last night never happened. 

 

And in a few months, Dan will be gone, and it will be like it never happened at all.

 

****

 

** 2001 **

 

Had the frat house always been this filthy and smelly, when he lived in it? Dan can’t help but wonder, sniffing suspiciously at the cup of unidentified liquid Jay (who was on his fifth year of undergrad, or “victory lap” as he had optimistically named it) Jay had given him when he arrived at the party. “HOMECOMING!” was printed in large gold letters on a banner hanging haphazardly from the frat house’s bannisters. Dan had only been away from school for a few months, since graduating that summer, but nothing about coming back to campus felt like “coming home.” He felt gawky, over-large, and out of place, like a high schooler returning to junior high.

 

Dan uses the toe of his shoe to prod at a used condom that seems to be stuck to the floor, like a beached jellyfish. Glancing up, he’s hit with a wave a nausea that has nothing to do with the house’s state of disrepair. Ed’s leaning over Amy like an albino scarecrow, and when he takes her hand in his, she doesn’t pull away.

 

She’d introduced him to Dan earlier in the night. Dan hadn’t been terribly impressed. The guy wasn’t especially witty, or charming, or handsome.

 

“What do you see in him?” Dan asks her later, once Ed has left her with a chaste peck goodnight and Dan has a few more of Jay’s mystery concoctions in his system.

 

Amy considers the question. “He’s very trustworthy, and reliable.”

 

“ _Reliable_ ,” Dan snorts, “How romantic.”

 

Amy makes a tsk noise. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, now that you’re living the glamorous life in DC, it’s easy to come back here and shit on me.”

 

There’s nothing terribly glamorous about Dan’s life in DC, living alone, subsisting mostly on frozen food, and banging his fellow interns, but he doesn’t tell her that. “I’m not trying to shit on you,” he inclines his head in a little bow of respect, “Madame President.”

 

Amy almost smiles. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

 

They sit together on the front steps of the frat house, passing a stolen cigarette back and forth between them. 

 

Dan lets his mind wander back to another party at this very house: New Years’ Eve, 2000. He’d kissed Amy as the ball dropped on the new millennium, the old newspapers the frat guys had shredded for confetti falling all around them, landing on their shoulders and in their hair, like ash. 2000 had felt like such a big year, a turning point, and as Dan had pulled away and looked down into Amy’s shining face, the moment felt significant, even prophetic. _For this year, and for every year to come_ , he’d thought to himself, dizzy and drunk on champagne, _I got you. You belong to me now_.

 

“If you’re ever in DC, get in touch with me,” Dan proposes, taking the burning end of the cigarette back from her. It crumbles to ash between his fingers, leaving a scorch mark that will become a scar.

 

“Yeah,” Amy agrees, absent-mindedly, “Definitely.”

 

It’s a promise that will go unfulfilled for more than a decade.

 

****

 

** 2016 **

 

They walk home together, down the Hill, after the shocking news of Selina’s not-quite-victory by tie. Amy is carrying her pumps in one hand, walking barefoot in the street. A journalist, or even a passerby, might recognize her, but she’s too tired and emotionally strung out to care. The streets are oddly empty; everyone’s inside, glued to their TVs, wondering what happens next.

 

Dan’s face is pale under his freckles. He looks young, _so young_ , like a boy again. Amy feels a pang of hurt, somewhere deep inside, in a place she’s tried to pretend didn’t exist.

 

_ He hurt me. He left me. But we were children, then.  _

 

_ What happens next? _

 

They finally reach the set up steps that lead up to Amy’s front door. Exhausted, Dan leans heavily on the bannister. “What a fucking day.”

 

“Do you want to come in for a drink?” Amy asks, without thinking. 

 

Dan’s head snaps up. He looks surprised, even little incredulous. “Really?”

 

Amy slowly mounts the stairs in her bare feet. She uses her free hand to dig her keys out of her purse and unlock the door. Dan remains at the base of the steps, looking up at her.

 

“Well? Are you coming, Mr. President?”

 

Dan hesitates for just a moment before following her. “I’m right behind you."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  
> \-- Reid Scott is three years older than Anna Chlumsky, which informed my decision to make him an older student.  
> \-- Quad golf is a real thing! The guys at my university played it whenever the weather was nice, and we were constantly in danger of being maimed by flying balls.
> 
> I appreciate any and all feedback as it both informs and encourages my ability to write this difficult duo! Thank you!


End file.
